It is common for businesses and homeowners to have a security system for detecting alarm conditions at their premises and reporting these to a monitoring station. One of the primary functions of the monitoring station is to notify a human operator when one or more alarm conditions have been sensed by detectors installed at a monitored premises.
Detectors may vary from relatively simple hard-wired detectors, such as door or window contacts to more sophisticated battery operated ones, such as motion and glass break detectors, to detect a variety of alarm conditions. Detectors may, for example, detect entries and exits to the premises, fire, glass breakage, noxious gases, flood, or the like.
The detectors may all report to an alarm control panel at the premises. The control panel is typically installed in a safe location and is connected to a power supply. The control panel is further in communication with the individual detectors to communicate with or receive signals from individual detectors. The communication between the alarm control panel and the detectors can be one or two way, and may be wired or wireless.
Communication between the premises and the monitoring station is typically effected using any of a number of communications networks, including the public switched telephone network (PSTN); a cellular telephone or data network; a packet switched network (e.g. the Internet), or the like.
Recently, equipping the premises with audio detectors (e.g. microphones) and audio output transducers (e.g. speakers) and providing two-way communication between the premises and the monitoring station has become commonplace. Microphones provide audio signals, representing audio sensed at the microphone to the monitoring station, thereby allowing the monitoring station to monitor audio at the premises in case of an alarm condition. The speakers, in turn, allow an operator at the monitoring station to speak with occupants at the premises in real-time.
Conveniently, an operator at the monitoring station may listen and react to events at a monitored premise, as they occur. For example, the operator at the monitoring station may speak to an occupant or intruder upon being notified of an alarm condition.
Typically, the channel(s) that are used to carry the two-way communication remain underutilized.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved two-way alarm systems and methods used in such systems.